As I mentioned before, the All Zombie on the Eastern Front: Polish Resistance game I'm running was inspired by one of noism's posts about a game he was running. I'd like to make a few posts about the Cyberpunk 2020 house-rules I'm using for the game.

In general, the move from the Cyberpunk future to the 1940's Eastern Europe involved a reduction of rules:

I dropped the character class system since most of the classes don't make sense in this setting(anyway, the classes are mostly just extensions of the skill-system)

A few skills are no longer relevant

Cyberware is no longer relevant

I was quite pleased with the result, since it made the highly complex Cyberpunk rules much more focused and concise. I also made a few minor tweaks to simplify the rules even more, like a fixed movement rate for PCs.

I'm going to try and make a few posts in the near future with more details about the house rules.

The latest session of All Zombies on the Eastern Front: Polish Resistance finally demonstrated the deadly nature of Cyberpunk 2020 rules(shortly after one of the players gave the "constructive criticism" that punching out "helpless" zombies was becoming passe). I had pre-generated the random encounters, but didn't really expect the players to fully-engage the first one due to the overwhelming odds against them. As such I was caught a little off-guard, having to keep track of 20 German troops and 5 Russian POW's. There weren't any major hiccups, but in the future I'll also prepare a chart in advance for tracking the status of all the characters in the pre-generated encounters.

Session SummaryAfter a short rest and being provided with horses and a rifleman from Jodicus Jecanty's band of resistance fighters, our heros departed for the nearby village of Lipnik. Their purpose: to catch up to the mysterious German convoy seen departing from now zombie-infested Gojcow and learn what they can about it's purposes.

This time they traveled by road, a greater risk, but they were in a hurry to reach the the village by sunset and inquire about the convoy, which must have passed through a full day before them. Riding will weapons visible, they quickly left the road when they saw a large group walking toward them in the opposite direction. Andre, Moriah, and Josafat hid a little ways into the forest, setting up a potential ambush.

A column of 20 battle-worn German troops passed them on the road, leading 5 Russian POW's, several of them barefoot. When they saw the prisoners, the party decided they must try to free them, a daring gesture given the odds. The Germans apparently saw the riders head into the forest because they were on their guard, but the column didn't stop.

At first the party's ambush went well, with Andre's heavy machine gun and Josafat's rifle inflicting heavy casualties on the rear of the column, while Moriah raced through the trees, looking for a vantage from which to throw a grenade.

The Germans split up, with several taking over watching the prisoners while some returned fire and others circled around. A German machine-gunner, followed closely by a medic, raced to the forested area on the other side of the road to set-up his weapon and return fire.

Moriah raced up to the edge of the tree-line, bravely taking the risk of being flanked, and throwing a grenade then ducking behind a tree, thus putting several German troops out of commission.

The Germans returned fire, with Moriah's tree absorbing round after round of SMG and machine gun fire, but her position kept her unharmed. The flanking Germans continued to approach Andrei and Josafat and fired several shots with their rifles but missed. Two surviving Stormtroopers charged them head-on from the road, SMG rounds scattering all around the two resistance fighters.

Andrei gunned down the two Stormtroopers with the machine gun, while Josephat repositioned to shoot at the flanking infantry, his shot hitting a tree. Moria drew her pistol as a Storm Trooper flanked her. She shot him in the arm, wounding him, but two of his shots hit her in her unprotected head, killing the Doctor instantly.

Andrei and Jodicus faced the approaching infantry, with Jodicus' grenade killing or stunning 3 of them and his rifle another, just before he too was shot fatally in the head. Andre faced the remaining two grappling with one, then punching out the other, avoiding the combat-knife of the first, then punching him out too.

Finding himself alone with a flesh wound from a lucky shot, Andrei could not see the remaining 4 Germans and their prisoners, who had repositioned themselves in the deep forest on the other side of the road. Not wanting to risk emerging from the relative safety of the wood(wisely), Andre looted an MP-40 from a dead Stormtrooper as well as a good amount of ammunition and German stick-grenades.

When he saw Moriah's body, he couldn't contain the tears, but ran howling to his horse and rode for Lipnik, intent on continuing their mission at all costs. There he successfully contacted the local resistance(Streetwise skill) where he may potentially find new recruits to help him.